Creative Work Database

Listing of creative work related to Singapore.

Our new Creative Work database is a repository for literary and dramatic works related to Singapore which are written by FASS Faculty and Students, past and present. The contents of this work-in-progress call on the theories and techniques taught and researched at FASS. Some of the creative work links to a sample of the original text. Research is also ongoing and the database will grow as we continue to update it. Items with the symbol “i” indicate that an abstract is available.

To search more effectively, please use the MLA or APA citation style which uses the author’s last name and initials.

x
Miss Maria Seetoh, a teacher of English and Literature in St Peter’s Secondary School in Singapore, sees herself as a ‘simple soul who only wants to be a good and happy person’, and has a dream to write stories about ‘simple, ordinary people going about their daily lives’. However, God/ Providence/Fate/Chance, etc. decrees otherwise. She is thrown into the tumult of a disastrous marriage that begins as strangely as it ends, a failed love affair that ‘hollows her out’, and a controversial teaching career that ends with her abrupt resignation. Most of all, she is caught in a political event as shocking in its causes as in its consequences.
Set against the backdrop of modern-day Singapore, a hugely successful city-state grappling with changes and challenges that could corrode the very soul, the novel ultimately examines, with wit, wry irony and warm understanding, the unchanging quandaries of the human condition, when love and sex, religion and politics, tradition and modernity, can all come together in an unruly mix, to show human nature at its most depressing and its most inspiring.

x
The Ocean Financial Centre is a history-making landmark. It has had three incarnations: the 1864, 1923 and 1974 Ocean Building, the latter two designed by Swan & Maclaren. Now, at the very same confluence of Raffles Place and the new business and financial district at Marina Bay, stands the 21st century development designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli.
The narrative begins at the present building, then retraces its steps to the previous three incarnations. Throughout, Dr KK Seet reinforces the notion that Ocean Building has remained prime with each incarnation. Highlighting the architectural features and the position of the building within the business, cultural and geographical landscape, he lets its tenants through the ages, from 1864 to 2011, relate how each edifice, in its own time, contributed to Singapore's skyline and commercial hub.